Our CodeHunters on Discord were able to solve this clue within a half hour, determining that the location of the clue was at Confusion Hill, California! (shoutout to Discord user DizzyDwarf [ @dizzydwarf42 ] who solved it first!)

Confusion Hill was home to the 11th clue in the original CipherHunt last summer: a jar of eyeballs. Confusion Hill is also the final resting place of our beloved Bill Cipher statue.

There rests at Confusion Hill a plaque honoring the grave of someone named Minnie. CodeHunters were quickly able to piece together that this must be the location of our next clue.

Unfortunately, we had a time crunch. Confusion Hill would be closing at 5pm, and no one currently online lived close enough to the location to be able to make it there in time.

The CodeMageddon Organizers/Time Agents imposed a time limit: CodeHunters had until 7pm PST to find the clue and inform the rest of the discord server. If it was not found by then, they would release the clue themselves (however, the physical clue would still be at the location if anyone wanted to go find it later).

We thought that would be the end of it. But around 2pm PST, @timetravellingscientist (Discord: Xantusia) announced that they were about 2 hours from Confusion Hill and would be able to go get the clue!

The first was a photograph. The photograph is “one of 1000 mileposts funded by the royal bank of Scotland to mark the creation of the National Cycle Network”

The second was a coded message. Using the Bifid cipher (Message: lsgovthdtatqyvvev, Key: umxdibwlhfzpocsrvnteqagky, Groupsize: 5, the message was revealed to say: lookatthemetadata

The meta data for the photograph read: Dragon, CH8

‘Dragon’ turned out to be in reference to the Welsh flag. ‘CH8’ is a postal code in Wales. It is most likely that the particular totem in that photograph is located along the bike path in the CH8 area, and will have to be found in order to discover the next clue.

“TAB and ASiP are secret episode twins. Need to be studied side by side, end to end.”

So, @longsnowsmoon5‘s awesome observation above gave me an idea. I re-watched A Study in Pink last night, and I think The Abominable Bride is partly a distorted mirror image of it. Sherlock’s drug fuelled Victorian Mind Palace is started by reading John’s blog entry of that case. So, Sherlock is thinking of that very important time and giving us a strange ‘through the looking-glass’ view, showing us what was and is important to him, what he would have done differently, and even what he regrets…

The First Meeting

Sherlock is a suave corpse-whipper. John watches instead of Molly.

Sherlock knows Molly was entranced by him beating the corpse with a riding crop. Except, John wasn’t there to see it. Drat! So, Sherlock imagines that John did get to see it, and that he definitely liked what he saw.

Sherlock makes himself into a much more dynamic, enigmatic figure for this first meeting. He remembers that John described him as “charming” on his blog, and he adores that. Staying true to his drama queen tendencies, Sherlock totally overblows that idea in his mind palace because he desperately wants to live up to the “idea” he believes John has of him (not yet understanding that John loves him for being himself.)

Tumblr has a very specific policy regarding harassment. If a person you have blocked has circumnavigated that block feature by creating another account and again contacted you, it is a violation of Tumblr’s harassment code and grounds to have that user banned from the entire site. How might they accomplish this? Well, it is actually fairly simple. I imagine that in some way, Tumblr administration creates a file with a case number which is given to the complainant as a continual reference point. I would imagine they then take all the URLs (known aliases) of the person and can quickly and easily cross-reference them to obtain meta data. You see, whether or not the blog has been disabled or deactivated, Tumblr still has access to the IP addresses and message conversations. Tumblr can block all participation from all associated IP. And if future contact is made by that person, accessing Tumblr by using another IP address, then that would be attached to the reference number and also banned.

That is how Tumblr can deal with harassment.

Libel is defined as “a method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a person’s reputation, exposes a person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, or injures a person in his/her business or profession.”

This includes the internet and the use of Tumblr to advertise a business venture. Because some user’s blogs are directly linked and tied to their financial endeavors of say, a publishing career, harassment of the user constitutes legal grounds for lawsuit. Especially when communications are taken out of context, altered, unfounded accusations against the user’s character are made, etcetera. When that harasser invites others to ridicule the user, that is legal libel and is pursuable in a court of law.

This is even more relevant, if the user has proof that the IP addresses directly associated with known physical addresses of the harasser continued to visit the website and/or accessed specific features, like say the “ask box”. It is also beneficial if the harassed party possesses a stockpile of time-stamped screen shots demonstrating that they repeatedly asked for the harasser to cease communications, and that the harasser did not. It is even more valuable if these screen shots demonstrate that this person wanted friendship, apologized for things they later denied, contradicted accusations made in the public forum, asked for forgiveness, and so on and so forth. These countless messages on multiple forums and saved emails directly from their IP, constitute a very strong argument that the harasser knew their libelous statements were false, and therefore continued to commit the crime of defamation of character.

How do they say it?

TL;DR: Legal Libel and defamation of character lawsuits can be founded on harassment claims made to social media platforms like Tumblr, particularly if those platforms have been monetized. Tumblr can recover records of message conversations and metadata from deactivated accounts for use in court. So if a person asks you not to contact them or blocks your account, do not then selectively “air your laundry” and encourage others to ridicule or otherwise harass the individual on your behalf. It is a particularly bad idea if you know the user in question is stubborn and has a pack of lawyers on retainer, as well as willing witnesses and depositions.

In short, it is unwise to be a dick. It is unwise to accuse someone of abuse, when all real evidence is to the contrary. It is unwise to perform “call outs” if you alter or misrepresent information, encourage others to participate, or have given the parties concerned your legal address, phone number, etcetera.

So! Please do obey the rules of Tumblr! If a person asks you to leave them alone or blocks you, do leave them alone! Do not lie to get attention! Do not go onto group blogs and spread these lies. It is not a good idea, and while it is perhaps the case that most blogs are run by legal minors or are not linked to financial ventures…some are. If someone ins harassing you, take screen shots of every single encounter, save all emails, record each URL, and organize this data into a file that is uploaded to a satellite server.

This has been a “PSA” from your friendly neighborhood monster and his legal counsel! Have a excellent day!

Seeing Anakin in the flesh for the first time and feeling his sheer raw power in the Force must have scared the living daylights out of Palpatine.

He’s crafty, yes, almost inhumanly so, but that’s not the same as being powerful. And how do you stand up against a being so far beyond your own capabilities - beyond your understanding of capability, perhaps? This is a creature born of the Force’s more human moments, after all.

You don’t. The first lesson Palpatine learnt was to bide his time. Wait until he was sure he could match his master in skill before killing him. Wait until the Senate begins to collapse before moving in to take over. Wait until the Republic is on the brink of falling into a black hole under the weight of its own bureaucracy before declaring it dead and putting an Empire in place. Darth Sidious knows how to wait, how to be patient, how to play a game of chess so long that by the time he moves for checkmate, most have forgotten that the game was ever begun.

And Anakin is young yet. The thirteen years it takes to bring him to heel (or perhaps to hell, as I initially typoed, is more accurate) is an epoch for this new Sith Lord still in the depths of adolescent identity crisis. Does Anakin remember ever distrusting this smiling figure of authority, this master of many that his slave’s background told him to be wary of at first?

But that power remains, and Sidious is not eager to give his own up. He has played apprentices off against the next in line to keep his own life safe. He is so close to gaining power over a galaxy; it’d be a tremendous waste not to remain alive for long enough to make use of that new title, Emperor. So his apprentice must be chained. This youth is already far beyond his power, a legend among Jedi - he has a reputation that most must live a century to gain.

How do you contain a power that could not have been born of human flesh and blood alone?

Sidious knows how to play a long game. You wait until that power comes to you. There is a cage waiting in the background, there has to be if that power is to be contained. A metal arm is nothing, not enough of a dent in the spark of living matter to hold any of that tremendous power. There must be greater cages, heavier chains.

But how to trick one who hates the mere sight of chains as this apprentice does into walking into the cage?

It’s easier than one might think. Cages are familiar. Safe in that he knows them well. The fact that this cage will be locked as soon as he steps aside need not be mentioned. Give it time - give it that patience that Palpatine spent so long developing - and he will walk into the trap as if it is salvation. Nerves can settle, fear can dissipate. If it hasn’t all been burned down to anger in the years it took to put this plan into place.

All Palpatine has to do is walk the fine line of appearing to be open space, a welcome freedom, and ensure that soon the freed slave learns to accept a cage again. Perhaps the cage he accepts is not the one that is eventually fitted around him. No matter. This is not an honourable game.

And behind those bars, the power is contained. The press of a button will cause him to freeze, on his knees to remind him that his power was not enough, will never be enough as long as he has a master, and this master he cannot kill. There is no cause to fear for Sidious’ power now; his position is as well protected as he can make it.

There is only one weakness in this plan, and that is the possibility of this apprentice learning the taste of freedom. Not a great threat, though, not after so many years of calling someone else master. Does this apprentice of his even know what freedom is, enough to know its taste if he ever finds it?

(Perhaps, though, Anakin does not need to know that the taste is freedom to crave it once it falls like ambrosia into his mouth. And that taste is a crowbar, one that will as easily be the swift and brutal death of a slaver as it will be the salvation of the slave trapped behind a locked door.)

A couple days ago, I was complaining on Twitter that I am, for various reasons, working on a revision in Word instead of Scrivener – and how much that makes me appreciate stuff I’ve started taking for granted in Scrivener, since I’ve been using it for at least seven years now. A couple of people asked me about those functions, so here is a very brief overview.

This is a short look at Scrivener’s three different modes (scrivenings, corkboard, and outliner), and what I use them for. A lot of it is basic stuff, and a lot of it is really just part of my own process, so how useful you find this may vary.

This is the basic set up with Scrivener. The binder on the left is essentially a list of the text files that make up your manuscript (or folders with files in them, organized however you please). Any files you select over there will show up in the main window (in this case, it’s showing scrivenings - the text of the files). Over at the right is the inspector, which lets you add data (like a summary, keywords, etc) to each scrivening. And what I noted up top is the mode toggle I’m going to be talking about. The left is scrivening view (what that screencap shows), center is corkboard mode, and right (covered by the g’s in “toggle”) is outliner mode.

SCRIVENING MODE

Select a scrivening in the binder. You now see the text that it contains (as well as its meta-data, if you have the inspector open). Select multiple scrivenings, and you can see all of their text, one after the other – even if you didn’t select consecutive scrivenings. This is useful if you want to view a whole chapter (instead of scenes) or every scene with a certain character, or all of your second act, or even the entire manuscript. This is the mode in which you do your writing. Basically, Scrivening Mode is your text editor, with the benefit of letting you view as much or little text as you want at a time, and being able to easily move from one text file to another.

(Quick tip, if you’re importing a whole manuscript from Word, or otherwise want to break down a large chunk of text into smaller scrivenings. Highlight the first line where you want to split, and go to Documents -> Split -> At Selection, or highlight and use command+K. For me personally, I generally have one scrivening per chapter as I draft, and then when I finish up and am going to revise, I split each chapter down into scenes. That’s just me, though - I don’t plot out scene-by-scene or chapter-by-chapter ahead of time, so I have to break things down later.)

Now, note the inspector off at the right side. As I said, that lets you attach a lot of metadata to each scrivening (and folder) you have in the binder. I’d recommend giving each one at least a title and summary. My chapter titles are super creative things like “One” and “Two,” but adding a summary helps keep things clear. I’ll get to more meta-data later on, but for now, that’s the minimum that you’ll need to be helpful in the next section…

CORKBOARD MODE

I think the index cards might be what Scrivener is best known for. Select at least one scrivening or folder from the binder, hit the toggle, and now boom: instead of look at your text, you’re looking at a cork board with index cards. Each scrivening/folder is a card. The same title and summary you created in the inspector are what appear on them. You can also add color coded thumbtacks and stamps for more information about your document (that same metadata).

But the real draw of this mode is that you can see all the different pieces of your novel laid out visually – and move them around. Swapping the placement of two index cards will swap the order of those scrivenings in your manuscript. Not sure where that flashback needs to go? Move it from the fourth position to the seventh, or whatever. It is literally as easy as clicking and dragging, because that’s all it is.

Rad.

But I will be honest: this is the mode I use the least. I don’t do visual information very well – I prefer to have it spelled out – and since I write and revise mostly in chronological order, I rarely find myself reshuffling pieces. So I’d say, play with it and see how it works for you. But as for me, I prefer…

OUTLINER MODE

Select some scrivenings again, toggle, and behold: an instant outline! Once again, you can see the title and summary of each Scrivening. At the bottom is an option to show/hide synopses – I like to show ‘em so I literally have an outline. By looking at the summaries stacked like this it’s a clear breakdown of everything that happens in the manuscript.

That’s the first column there. Now we get into that meta-data I’ve been talking about.

My next column is “POV” - which is not a Scrivener default. Scrivener actually assumes you’ll want something called “label” but I didn’t find its default labels useful. Click on the little up-and-down triangle-y symbol next to any label to pull it down, and choose “Edit.” That lets you add or remove labels, change their colors from the default, and up at the top, set a custom title. So I changed the title to “POV,” deleted the default options, and dropped in my character’s names (plus “split” for when multiple POVs are in a chapter).

For me, this turned out to be super useful. I’ve got two POV characters, but Jae is the primary protagonist. This let me tell at a glance if I’d gone too long without delving into Elan’s POV - I could see huge chunks where he wasn’t represented, so when revision time came, I gave that a lot of consideration.

The next column is “Status.” I don’t find that one super useful, but haven’t found anything more useful to use instead. If you’re someone who revises by theme or character or whatever (as opposed to chronologically through the novel), this might be more helpful for you!

Then you’ve got word count. This is another that I found VERY helpful, because stacked like this and able to scroll down through the whole thing, I could see if chapter were too short or too long. Mine tend to hover between 3,000 and 4,000 words, so if I found any that were really short or long I’d take a look where they were breaking to see if any alternatives made sense.

Finally, keywords! Again, these were very helpful for me as I was going into revisions, especially my first round. If you look up at the top bar in Scrivener, there’s a button that’s got a key on it. Press it to bring up your full keyword list. You can add new keywords down at the bottom (or highlight a keyword and press delete to, well, delete). You can also highlight a keyword and doubleclick it to edit, or doubleclick the little square to change its swatch color.

Here’s how I used keywords: every character got two, one to slap in any scene where they appeared, and one to slap in any scene where they were mentioned. (So for example, “Character: Elan” and “Character: Elan (mentioned)”.)** I color coded these with a dark pink for appearances and a bright pink for mentions for at-a-glance ease. I also added locations where scenes take place, and important concepts and themes (like various kinds of magic). This let me track who was doing what where, and whether key story elements were being introduced when they should and if they were present enough in the story to work they way they were supposed to.

** I’m not sure if it’s new or I just never noticed it, but it looks like there is a sibling/child option for new keywords. So instead of doing it like this I could have created one keyword for Character Appears with sub-keywords for every character, and one keyword for Character Mentioned and sub-keywords for every character.

Tip: Select a keyword, and then down at the bottom choose “search.” Any scrivenings where that keyword has been added will appear in the binder, so you can easily see them and select them for viewing. (There’s a little X in the lower-right corner of the binder to dismiss this - it took me a hilariously long time to find that, for some reason.)

That’s all the meta-data that I use – but it’s not all that Scrivener offers. There’s a little double carrat at the very right side of the view. Click on that to see other options, and to select/deselect them to customize your outliner mode. (This is where you can add targets and progress, if those are helpful to you!)

So again - this is all very helpful for me, particularly going into revisions. It let me see where I was dropping the ball on plot threads (if a tagged keyword didn’t appear often enough) or losting track of a POV, check consistency on location details between chapters, etc. If any of that sounds useful, I’d definitely recommend playing around with the mode and the options for what you do with it. You can set up other custom meta-data if you have other things you’d like to track and be aware of, and you can get rid of any pieces of the view that aren’t useful for you.

I suspect that like index card mode, it isn’t useful for everyone, but the great thing is that Scrivener is so flexible you can probably find a way to make it work for your process, whatever your process is. As for me… now I’m back to revising in outline-view-less Word. SIGH.

(Let me know if any of this doesn’t make sense or you have more questions or whatever!)

It’s always kinda bugged me that they solidified Data as having ‘no’ emotions. In the first and second seasons, it was more that he had a limited range of emotions, that instead of him being devoid of emotions, he was simply restricted, that he could feel things, but didn’t understand them. Especially when you consider how often Data made decisions that qualified as the humane choice over the logical one - if he really didn’t have emotions, he wouldn’t be conflicted over things like letting the exocomps be sacrificed in ‘The Quality of Life,’ or so focused on understanding humanity - Data, BY DEFINITION, started from a place of emotion, because he DESIRED to be more human!

And I firmly feel that, had Doctor Pulaski stayed, she’d be the one pointing this out - after all, by the end of season two, she supported Data, said things like ‘the responses are the same, whether they’re caused by human emotions or android algorithms’ in Peak Performance, and responding to Worf saying that Data’s friend Sarjenka in ‘Pen Pals’ dying meant something to Data with ‘does that invalidate the emotion?’ SHE TALKED BACK TO WORF ON THE VALIDITY OF DATA’S EMOTIONS.

Pulaski would definitely call bull on Data ‘not’ having emotions. She’d be the one saying that whether or not he was designed to have emotional capabilities, by him having experienced human emotions and reactions around him, knowing how they’ve been applied by the humans around him, and being able to apply that knowledge himself in his own experiences, the distinction between them being an actual ‘feeling’ or a coded response based on his programming becomes academic. In Data learning and understanding the emotions of people around him, he IS learning about emotions and how to apply them himself. There may not be a distinct ‘line’ for him to cross, but he clearly HAD the capacity for emotion.

I really really wish that someone had sat down with Data after he first was re-activated and had said to him ‘you don’t need to be anything other than you’ and had encouraged him to explore himself as he is, instead of this constant expectation for him to become something he’s not - human.

Because no matter what Data isn’t human, which is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. 'To seek out new life’ to embrace new lifeforms is how I read that prime directive, not 'to seek out new life and change and model it into our own image.'

This is the one thing that consistently makes me sad in TNG. Stop trying to forcibly assign human traits and reactions and emotions to a being that is not human, let him BE not human, let those around him embrace his differences instead of ridiculing them or assigning their own emotions to him because his 'lack’ makes them feel uncomfortable.

If Data was a bio-organic life form, would he be facing the same pressures and encouragement to lose his own identity and assimilate into a facsimile of a human?

I can’t help but think no. I wish Data had gotten to meet a fully functional and undamaged android just like him that was completely comfortable with it’s own identity as a non human being, so that somehow he could have had the chance to explore his own self unrestrained and devoid of a forced atmosphere/expectation to be something he was not.

Summary: Garrus and Shepard hack into Nihlus’ omni-tool after Eden Prime, but what they find leads to more questions than answers. (Rated M for what is, essentially, a sex tape.)

- - -

“Thanks for helping me with this, Garrus.”

“Garrus nodded, glad to be useful on the strange human ship. After the tour of the not-entirely-familiar frigate, it felt good to get down to work on something that he knew well. “It’s no problem.”

“Tech has never been my specialty.” Shepard winced. “Especially turian tech. I’ve never been able to understand your alphabet very well.”

Garrus nodded, his attention focused on Nihlus’ omni-tool that Shepard had confiscated on Eden Prime. He bent down to get a better look at it, trying to see if there was some sort of way to decipher the dead man’s pass code.

“Do you really think we’ll find any information about Saren on this?” Shepard sipped her coffee – her third in the last eight hours. Humans didn’t seem to have the endurance turians did.

“I’m not sure, Commander.” Garrus flickered his mandibles in thought. “Saren said that he knew Nihlus had died on Eden Prime from checking his files remotely. It seems odd that Saren would routinely check another Spectre’s files, let alone their vitals.”

“Yeah.” Shepard leaned back in one of the chairs in the Normandy’s communication room, and Garrus watched her stretch out of the corner of his eye. “It does. But that might just be a way for Saren to try to give himself an alibi.”

“Turians rarely lie.” Garrus frowned. “Did you hear a lilt to his sub-vocals?”

“A lilt.” Shepard gave him an odd look. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You know… a lilt.” Garrus sighed, and tried to think of a small lie he could tell her. “Like… The dextro options on the Normandy are outstanding.”

Shepard stared at him. “Glad to hear it, but what does that have to do with Saren?”

First off. Moriarty has the paid version of the app, and makes a point of challenging Joan when Joan is sitting in interrogations, or with her mother, or on a date with some guy her mother fixed her up with. Joan, you see, Joan gets REALLY into it. Like really, really into it. She’s competitive, she had to be to get where she was in medicine before her patient died, and she knows a lot of stuff and is good at trivia. Joan always wants to win, but Moriarty gets the better of her from time to time.

laughs when their partner trips on something

It was this one time, they were meeting for coffee and it was finally spring and Joan had raised an eyebrow and inclined her head, wanting to go outside. Moriarty, behind ridiculous bug-like sunglasses, had caught her very expensive shoe on an uneven section of sidewalk and had gone ass over teakettle, coffee flying in this brilliant arc over her head. It landed around her, almost in a perfect circle, and none of it touched her pristine outfit. Somehow, this whole scenario was absolutely hilarious to Joan, and she laughed and laughed and laughed while Moriarty scowled at her and marched back into the coffee shop to see about another cup.

would drop ice down the back of the other’s shirt as a joke

Well that’s a surefire way to get yourself killed, Joan reasons watching as Moriarty looks murder up a the metal awning that they’d taken refuge under. Ice and snow had slipped from it and slid, oh so casually off and onto Moriarty’s head. Her collar is up, but some still gets in anyway. The sound that Moriarty makes as she shimmies and tries to get the ice to melt is most undignified and certainly out of character.

spoils the ending of books/movies

Moriarty likes to make her guesses, she sees Joan’s choices of reading material as unworthy of her time (she’s never much cared for novels), but she’ll guess the ending all the same. Joan will hum at the back of her throat and ignore anything she says regarding the books Moriarty spies in her purse when they meet. She’ll ignore everything but the curve of Moriarty’s lips and how easily they slide against her own.

always posts a picture of the other as their MCM or WCW

“I thought you didn’t do social media.”

“I don’t, by rule.”

“Then what’s this?” Joan holds up her phone and shows her the curious ‘re-gram’ that Oren had sent her with a series of question marks attached.

Moriarty’s face is impassive. “A photograph of you, posted to a social media site where anyone can access the image’s meta data and discover all sorts of interesting things about the photographer.”

“And you’re not janieblority82 on instagram?”

“Of course not, Joan.” Moriarty tilts her head to the side. “I would have taken a better photograph of you. Perhaps naked, just fucked, the sun on your belly and breasts?”

eats the last piece of cake in the fridge before the other can have it

It was Joan’s birthday, after all. The cupcake had been a sweet gesture, one that Joan hadn’t anticipated at all. She’d taken it with a shy feeling at her stomach, not sure how she was supposed to react.

She’s fucking pissed when she finally works up the nerve to eat the cupcake later that evening to find the box empty and a note that simply reads ‘criminal.’

obnoxiously celebrates Monday Punday every week

After Sherlock discovers it, it’s only a matter of time before Moriarty follows his lead, and Joan spends entirely too much time hanging out with Marcus and Andre on Monday evenings.

“I thought you friended me on facebook,” Chad is saying, frowning at his phone. “Instead all I have is this message from you that says that I am unworthy of your time and that my dye job isn’t fooling anyone.”

Joan groans and buries her head in her hands. “I’ve… got this friend. Who likes to guess my passwords.”

The anti-psychiatry readings. Post the titles for your fellow crazy people pleaaaaaaaaase.

Ah first I should mention that I have never considered myself crazy, and have never experienced psychosis so I don’t think it would be very fair for me to call myself that even if I was still dealing with mental health stuff. I also don’t think of myself as mentally ill anymore so that made me slightly uncomfortable and you may wanna watch tossing that label onto people (esp on anon) BUT I’m not upset or angry or anything and I’m sure it was an honest mistake so here goes:

The one I’ve read and only partially annotated is Cracked: The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry by James Davies. I think it’s really great and well-sourced. My coworker has my only copy of it, and I think I may let her keep it and get another one. Once I digitize my notes I will try to upload them here! I’ll probably post them in my /tagged/anti-psychiatry page, if you wanna keep an eye out for them.

Capitalist Reailsm: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher is one I’ve only recently had my attention drawn to. It is on Amazon here and a link to a pdf can be found here. Haven’t heard much about it, but I read a couple of quotes that resonated enough for me to want the whole things.

The Emporer’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch is one I’m looking forward to a lot because I’ve read a couple of his articles and they’ve been good but I haven’t bought the book itself yet. I think it’s based on an analysis of about 15 years of data, and a meta-analysis he did a few years ago about antidepressants.

So here are the ones on my current list but I’m forgetting a big one (an old book, pretty sure it’s published by Penguin classics, always forget the name) and I have a ton of reading on my plate already for senior year of college but here it is! Hope you read a couple and let me know what you think!

there's been this post that has the OP saying "yes I edited your fucking signature out of the artwork. no it doesn't matter. I bought it it's mine. fuck you." and subsequent users have mentioned about how the metadata can store our contact information. How can I add my info in my art's metadata when exporting and saving in krita?

Okay, I double checked in krita 3.0, and made sure that png export at the least saves author and title meta-data today(it doesn’t load it yet, but other programs can see it now). In krita settings->configure Krita->author allows you to set your author info, and settings->active author profile allows you to set which author profile to use, including an ‘anonymous’ one.

This is automatically used for kra and png files, and you can set the title in file->document information.

Sadly enough, a lot of programs don’t take metadata very seriously, imgur for example strips it to save space. So what you could do instead is use G’Mic’s fourier watermark.

For windows, this absolutely requires the 3.0 beta because of the g’mic fixes there.

The bigger the size of the text, the better your watermark will come out.

Now, if you press ok, you will see no visible change. However, if you then apply a fourier transform… (the gmic filter above watermak)

Spooky text! Obviously, you need to find a balance between size and legibility.

What is happening here is that we encode a piece of text in subtle differences between the pixels. repetitively.

So even if we do some of the typical things people do to images, lie cropping.

It will still remain visible with the fourier watermark.

I haven’t tested it extensively, just cropped and then smudged part of the image, but it seems that you’d need to modify the image quite a bit(such as a full image blur) to get rid of the watermark.

I reblogged a thread a few days ago and had a chance to check recent ideas, so I’ll briefly summarise them and tag folks who contributed. Reblogs have splintered (as they do^^), but I have an idea to cope with that.

IDEA: an archive for Sherlock meta posts

Not just TJLC but everything; comparable maybe to my TAB Meta Masterpost, only for the entire series. It will be an inclusive, comprehensive archive of thoughts on the series.

Suggestions on how to realise them included using AO3, something on tumblr, etc. Something that emerged seems to be @weweretoldandwelistened (seem to be unable to tag you) offered to program a site and made some suggestions.

Detailed quotes below the cut, but what it boils down to is that we will establish a site exclusively to archive Sherlock-related meta.

Details will be hashed out. We will need funding, admins, etc., and it’s going to turn very complicated very soon. There might be a gchat soon. Anyway, I had a an hour before leaving for uni, so:

If you are interested in updates and/or helping out, you can

follow @sherlockmetalibrary which I just opened to have a centralised update blog for the time being

1: Name: Anonymous
2: Age: old enough to be a mother too young to feel wise
3: 3 Fears: Innertia, Fear Itself, Stunted evolution…
4: 3 things I love: Love, Empathetic Life Forms, Nature
5: 4 turn ons: Courage, Fearlessness, People who know how to find the beauty & inspiration in the quotidian spaces of Life, Anything New.
6: 4 turns off: Hate, Miss-placed Anger, Ignorance, Dogma,
7: My best friend, Loves unconditionally and knows were all connected…
8: Sexual orientation, What ever floats my boat at that moment.
9: My best first date, Don’t date.
10: How tall am I, physically 5'5" Mentally 6'0"
11: What do I miss, Space, clean air, clean water and respect for Nature within the community.
12: What time was I born, 8 pm.
13: Favorite color, White because it’s said to hold the whole prism of color in its reflected light.
14: Do I have a crush, yup.
15: Favorite quote, Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
16: Favorite place: ’ Any Place on earth with pristine nature.
17: Favorite food: Almost Anything with white truffles
18: Do I use sarcasm: ‘Does a Bear Shit in the Woods?
19: What am I listening to right now: The Silence of the Hotel Room
20: First thing I notice in new person: Their Personality
21: Shoe size: 7.5 American
22: Eye color: Brown
23: Hair color: Brown
24: Favorite style of clothing: Tight, Snug, Comfortable, Fitted, Great fabrics such as Cashmere, silk blends, and any durable brands i can find with quality tailoring
25: Ever done a prank call?: ’ This is the Department of Water and Power, were having technical issues in the Area were wondering if your water’s running.“ … "Go catch it”
27: Meaning behind my URL, integration, connection, channeling of creative inspiration…
28: Favorite movie: Movies to me are like Music, Transient impermanent emotions that can’t be isolated to one genre, vibe, or platform. Cabaret, resevior dogs, pulp fiction, clockwork orange, fight club, alice and wonderland, lion king, Wallie, Blade Runner, Woman under the influence, Thelma and Louise, Fried green tomatoes, Bad Boys, Men In Black, The dark Night, Batman, Natural Born Killers, Rebel without a cause, The outsiders, Rumble fish, Bullet, Menace to society, coming to America, Independence day, Johnny 5, 12 monkeys, Stand By me, Blood in Blood Out, The constant Gardner, the insider, Woman Under the Influence, the hustler, Cool hand Luke, Cat on a hot tin roof, all about eve, inherit the wind, the newsroom, Bonnie and Clyde, Butch cassidy and the sundance kid, The Matrix, Bel duJour, the story of O, Men prefer Blonds, The devil wears prada, west side story,
29: Favorite song:I’ll be here all night writing my favorite songs its too vast to choose a favorite,
30: Favorite band: The Rolling stones covered most of my life’s emotional roller coaster of growth and evolution, in the lyrics their attitude throughout the years and especially in their time transcending classic sound.
31: How I feel right now, Mellow, Anxious, Determined, Lost… Found. Cycles through this pattern for hours…
32: Someone I love, can hurt me, can raise me, can inspire me, can bring me down, can be the fuel to my flight, or the hole in my wing.
33: My current relationship status, Running Solo, no time for distractions I’m going in, Over… Im going in…
34: My relationship with my parents: Honest, hauntingly a reality check on the impermanence of life. It’s funny at times sarcastic full of gratitude and a Joker’s smirk at all hardships endured.
35: Favorite holiday: Halloween, because when the masks come on they are actually coming off… It’s a chance to be playful celebrate life with all its archetypical symbols bells and whistles, and after the night of chaos and debauchery you see the masks slip and the truth sneaks out from all my inebriated friends, self included.
36: Tattoos and piercing i have; no piercings, One ink tattoo Hat Teaw Buddhist five point prayer tattoo from Thailand it’s on my shoulder. Its an almost 4,000 year old Buddhist tradition from south east Asia past down from generations of fighting monks who used these inked prayers made up of Kuhmer and Pali language to protect them in war.
37: Tattoos and piercings I want from now on should be invisible to the naked eye and spiritual in some way that reminds me why I live but doesn’t make an exhibition out of it.
38: The reason I joined Tumblr, is cause I became addicted to the influx of creative information I could gather after I found the right cluster of Blog’s to follow.
39: Do I and my last ex hate each other? never, well I’ll never know what the other thinks, really.
40: Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts? when I tantalize a soul who connects on a deep level yes, It’s a transient experience for me though, never quite lasts more than 2 years this chemical psychological physical dance.
41: Have I ever kissed the last person I texted? yes
42: When did I last hold hands? hours ago
43: How long does it take me to get ready in the morning? 15 minutes to an hour depends on my mood and my agenda.
44: Have You shaved your legs in the past three days? yes
45: Where am I right now? earth
46: If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me? I uber a cab and go home alone.
47: Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level? Loud along as I know Im not invading anyones space with it.
48: Do I live with my Mom and Dad? No
49: Am I excited for anything? All or nothing. Either Im inspired because I’m learning vibing off a new experience or I’m counting the hours till the mundane monotonous task is over & I’m liberated to do as I please again.
50: Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to? Yes
51: How often do I wear a fake smile? 25 % of the time out in public not to be rude to a stranger invading my personal space. That percentage goes to 50% when I have to run an errand and Im in a bad mood.
52: When was the last time I hugged someone? Hours ago
53: What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me? I’d wonder if this is an opportunity for a group fun situation or if the person i was kissing is just greedy and wants all the fun alone.
54: Is there anyone I trust even though I should not? There are lots of people I trust that conventional wisdom would say I shouldn’t but my measurement mechanism for trust is calibrated in such a way where I rarely trust just any human with sacred things like my heart or my life.
55: What is something I disliked about today? The seeming lack of Humanity in the systems ruling countries, where monetary incentives override reason, logic, & and in most cases ethics.
56: If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? The gatekeeper for the mysterious ancient library of Vatican Island. I believe they’re may be some texts from Alexandria and other libraries burnt down across the ancient world during the roman inquisition that may hold some cool research and unveil lots of mysteries that shouldn’t be mysteries at all.
57: What do I think about most? I think about how I can take all the seemingly meaningless information Ive accumulated throughout my life and consolidate it all into film. Whether they’ll be good or bad I don’t know, but I spend most of my time trying to consolidate information. I have hope that this next generation will take this saturated era of ‘information’ and consolidate the best of this ‘intel’ into pockets of useful quality.Im not part of this generation so I struggle with Meta Data Filing.
58: What’s my strangest talent? Accumulation seemingly useless information over the course of decades, on Technology, political statistics, Nature, economy and resurfacing these pieces of intel into story lines for projects Im working on, script concepts. I wouldn’t call it a talent but its definitely strange.
59: Do I have any strange phobias? Deep ocean freaks me out…
60: Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? Behind
61: What was the last lie I told? That I was exited too.
62: Do I prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? phone, I like to leave room for multitasking and I don’t want anyone offended that i don’t seem to give them my full attention.
63: Do I believe in ghosts? I believe in stagnant energy forces that can disrupt our 4 known dimensions in existence by blinking in and out of our space time continuum similar to electrons when they shift from wave form back to particle. Since were all made up of never dying energy that is constantly changing at a quantum level, a transition from life to death that isn’t energetically tracked by any great pier reviewed scientific papers… I leave room for the theories; Egyptian, Indian, Greek, and Roman Mystics. Living my mind open to the idea that after death a ball of energetic intension can linger at a traumatic place of death, I can imagine souls lingering between dimensions in a limbo of sorts with an energetic equivalent of a stunted consciousness or a ball of traumatized streams of energy with no conducive flow out of their stagnant state, like crumpled up charged wires that can’t exit their frequency because the wires are all knotted up blocking the flow. Something like that could disrupt our dimension of time and space. Energy is everywhere and not all energy flows freely, i can picture it.
64: Do I believe in magic?I believe magic is only magic to the people who don’t know how the act of magic was accomplished in our physical world. So yes I do believe in Magic, I just have a feeling that the practice of Magic is a science in the manipulation of nature and perception.
65: Do I believe in luck? I believe in subtle energetic attractions caused by an individuals mental processes, & this is my definition to the cause of such phenomena as the perception of Luck. When you think, you shift, by default, what you see in your experience through life. What you Think shifts your reticular activation system, and that affects what you see, what you hear, what you feel, and all that affects what you can attract in your life or repel. Im think it’s whats perceived as luck.
66: What’s the weather like right now? cold
67: What was the last book I’ve read? 'The Grand Inquisitor’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky
68: Do I like the smell of gasoline? no
69: Do I have any nicknames? Mitchy Mish MRod
70: What was the worst injury I’ve ever had? I fell trying to climb onto the second floor of the gym in some useless stunt and I snapped the ACL from my knee upon landing.
71: Do I spend money or save it? Spend invest but mostly spend…
72: Can I touch my nose with a tongue? Only if i push my nose down
73: Is there anything pink in 10 feet from me? My Jacket is Salmon pink so i guess yeah, but I must say thats rare.
74: Favorite animal? Any type of cat
75: What was I doing last night at 12 AM? Watching the film 'Interstellar’
76: What do I think is Satan’s last name is? Osiris, Hades, or Tammuz
77: What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it? 'I’m a Passenger’ by Iggy Pop
78: How can you win my heart? Always look me in the eye with a well informed smile of goodwill and honesty, revealing your truth constantly to me, no mask, just love, humility, drive, and relentless will towards evolution & spiritual growth.
79: What would I want to be written on my tombstone? I want to be cremated and blown into the ocean
80: What is my favorite word? evolution
81: My top 5 blogs on tumblr: I’m partial to the mixture of them 'All’ setting my favorite tone. Most of the blogs i follow are specialized & catering to varying aesthetic vibes, so much so that splitting any of the 100 or so into 5 would undermine what I favor overall.
82: If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say? 'Do the world a favor… kill yourself’. Jklol, I guess I would say 'We are One, Fighting that Peace of Truth is a race in futility, lets go with the tide for once and try Love over Hate.’
83: Do I have any relatives in jail? Not that I know of but then again I haven’t talked to that side of the family in a long time.
84: I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power? Inter-dementional Space Time travel. This way I can harness my consciousness and leave my body at will to go anywhere I want in my eternal energetic form, fully cognitive memory in tact even after my body dies.Like those tibetan rainbow monks.
85: What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on? Do you believe mankind will be responsible enough to save himself and his home planet from blatant destruction in time for the next generation?
86: What is my current desktop picture? A Jack Kerouac Quote:’ Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble makers The round heads in the square holes The ones who see things differently They’re not fond of rules & they have no respect for the status quo You can quote them, Disagree with Them Glorify them or Vilify them The only thing you can’t do is ignore them Because they change things They push the human race forward & While some may see them as the crazy ones we see Genius Because the people who think they can change the world are the ones who do.“
87: Had sex? Long, Long ago, in a Galaxy far far Away.
88: Bought condoms? Lamb Skin, Magnums, Trojans
89: Gotten pregnant? Nope
90: Failed a class? Most
91: Kissed a boy? A few
92: Kissed a girl? A few
93: Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain? No but that sounds amazing
94: Had job? Summer
95: Left the house without my wallet? all the time
96: Bullied someone on the internet? Not since they had Yahoo fight chat rooms…
97: Had sex in public? been a while
98: Played on a sports team? charity event long ago
99: Smoked weed? only when prescribed
100: Did drugs? plead the fifth
101: Smoked cigarettes? I vape
102: Drank alcohol? last week
103: Am I a vegetarian/vegan? tried it for 6 months went anemic I’m missing enzymes to break down nuts and green. So answers not anymore
104: Been overweight? nope
105: Been underweight? nope
106: Been to a wedding? yup in spring
107: Been on the computer for 5 hours straight? last night
108: Watched TV for 5 hours straight? 3 days ago
109: Been outside my home country? 4 days ago
110: Gotten my heart broken? often. usually
111: Been to a professional sports game? beginning of 2014
112: Broken a bone? nope
113: Cut myself? a month ago on a coke bottle cap
114: Been to prom? nope
115: Been in airplane? constantly
116: Fly by helicopter? 3 times last year
117: What concerts have I been to? Metallica Beyonce Madonna Prince
118: Had a crush on someone of the same sex? yup
119: Learned another language? bilingual spanish / english
120: Wore make up? last week event
121: Lost my virginity before I was 18? 17
122: Had oral sex? plead the 5th
123: Dyed my hair? never
124: Voted in a presidential election? plead the 5th
125: Rode in an ambulance? once
126: Had a surgery? nope
127: Met someone famous? happens often
128: Stalked someone on a social network? never
129: Peed outside? often at burning man
130: Been fishing? once or twice in life don’t like it
131: Helped with charity? often
132: Been rejected by a crush? once
133: Broken a mirror? don’t think so
134: What do I want for birthday? New Vibe New Friends creative space…

Hello my wise and knowledgeable friend. Do you happen to know how I could find out the total word count in the Sherlock fandom on AO3? Thank you!

The practical way of getting a sense of the total number of words spilt in the name of Sherlock (TV) would be to approximate (1). The simple way to get a more accurate count would to ask someone else to do it automatically, like me (2).

According to AO3 meta data, at least 362,512,528 words have been posted in 67226 works in Sherlock (TV) fandom, as of sometime this afternoon, the 21st of January 2015 (3). That’s more than a third of a billion words.

But if they had dollar for each Sherlock-related word, they could buy a Boeing 747 (along with the piloting services of Martin Crieff.)

Maybe a more useful unit is time: at the average speed of 300 words/minutes (4), it would take a very dedicated Sherlock fan 2 years and 4 months of reading 24/7 to catch up. Though… would they catch up?

Oh, probably not. This figure shows the number of words published per week on A03 since Sherlock first aired. It’s taken a while to scale up to this rate of activity, but these days enough words are being posted that a fan would have to sacrifice sleeping and eating indefinitely just to keep up. That’s a pretty good excuse for not being up to date on all the great stuff being published.

Sorry sublimelybeautiful! This maybe wasn’t what you were asking for. The footnotes below maybe do that better.

Footnotes

(1) If I wanted to know the total word count for the Sherlock works on AO3 in less than 5 minutes, I’d order them by word counts, sample the count on the percentiles (or the tens of them: 10th, 20th, 30th, etc.), multiply those by the number of works they represented, and add it all together. Of course, when I do that I get something like 281M, which is the right order of magnitude but still off by 22%. This error is because the distribution is really skewed. How skewed? This skewed:

88% of works have less than 10k words, but the long fic can get super huge. Another graph shows this better (from my perspective):

This cumulative distribution reports the percentage of works with fewer words than the x axis value, reported on a logarithmic scale because of the long tail of the few variably gigantic fics. It’s the same information as above, but with less wasted space and shows a few points more clearly. We can see a skip in the curve from the 1700 fics that are 221 words long (2.5%), and recognize that less than 0.5% of fics have over 100k.

(2) This question lead me to realise there was an error in my scrapper; I always forget that the English like to put commas in their large numbers. So I fixed it and crawl through the archive again, which took several hours, but now I can have the above calculated in less than a minute.

(3) I say at least because I’ve noticed a few contexts in which the AO3 word counter fails to count any words, like sometimes when a post begins with a picture. Still, the issue can not effect more than 1% of our fic. Also my scrapper seems to skip a few hundred works. One day I’ll figure out why.

(4) 300 words/minute is the average speed for anglophone adults reading english, though I would guess there are a lot of Sherlock fanfic readers that go way faster, for a pile of reasons. :)